University of California Institute
for Labor and Employment
The State of California Labor, 2001
(University of California, Multi-Campus Research Unit)
Year 
Paper Section
Labor and Community Collaboration
Marcos Vargas
This paper is posted at the eScholarship Repository, University of California.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/ile/scl2001/Section18
c
Copyright 2001
by the author.
CHAPTER 16
L ABOR AND C OMMUNITY C OLLABORATION
MARCOS VARGAS
Despite the current resurgence in union organizing activity in states such as California, continued
expansion of the new economy has failed to lift a large sector of the state’s labor force out of poverty. In
light of this form of persistent inequalities, there has become a growing need to undertake new strategies
to strengthen workers’ collective voice. The overall decline in union membership nationwide during the
last thirty years has also raised concerns over the capacity of organized labor alone to effectively address
much needed wage, health and safety issues affecting many workers and their families. Moreover, many
unions do not have the staff to effectively reach the growing number of immigrant low-wage workers.
This is not to say that this new workforce cannot be organized. Over the last decade, some unions have
successfully undertaken collaborative broad-based organizing efforts, such as Los Angeles’ highly
successful Justice for Janitors campaign, mobilizations to pass local living wage ordinances, and
organized mass protests against global free trade policies. These trends reflect a growing realization of the
strategic need to strengthen the collective voice of workers and their families through collaborative
advocacy and organizing efforts that bring together organized labor and other sectors of civil society.
One sector which has emerged as a potentially important new partner in the efforts to give greater
voice to the collective voice of workers is the state’s community-based organizations (CBOs). In response
to pressing issues of common concern to labor unions and CBOs, there has been a marked increase in
collaboration between these two groups in the form of coalitions around unionization, community
organizing and legislative advocacy. A survey of California unions and CBOs, from which this article
draws much of its data, indicates that such collaborative efforts have become an integral part of efforts by
unions to address issues affecting workers and their families. Such collaborative efforts include
community-based organizing, political empowerment, policy planning, legislative advocacy, community
unionization efforts, worker centers and social movements.
Furthermore, the growing influence of ethnic and multi ethnic CBOs in California has also
provided opportunities for greater cooperation among organized labor and those organizations whose
mission it is to serve immigrant communities. As California’s Latino and Asian immigrant communities
continue to grow in their economic and political importance, ethnic and multi ethnic CBOs, as well as
CBOs engaged in social movements for social, economic and environmental justice, continue to exert
political and economic influence. For example, grassroots efforts by Latino CBOs to effectively tap into
the backlash against the 1994 passage of the anti-immigrant initiative Proposition 187 resulted in an
increase in naturalization applications from approximately 250,000 in 1990 to an estimated 1.3 million in
1996. By 1998 this translated into a jump in Latino voter participation from 8 percent in 1994 to 13
percent in 1998, contributing significantly to the election of Governor Gray Davis and Lieutenant
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements to the following for their contributions to this paper: Dr. Paul Ong, Director of the UCLA
Institute of Industrial Relations and Co-Principle Investigator of the Future of Work and Health Research Project;
June McMahon, Co-Principle Investigator; and Research Assistants, Rena Wong, Andrea Tinsley, and Andrew
Graham; the Wellness Foundation; the Ventura County Living Wage Coalition; Robin Jacobs for her assistance in
editing and all the union and California representatives for their participation in the research surveys and interviews .
Labor and Community Collaboration
Governor Cruz Bustamante (Vargas 1999). Other CBOs with ethnic and multi ethnic constituencies have
been instrumental in affecting local policy, such as living wage coalitions headed by such organizations as
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, San Jose’s Working Partnership USA, and San Diego’s
Center for Policy Initiatives.
Efforts to pass city and county living wage ordinances through grassroots labor and community
organizing campaigns represent one important new organizing and legislative strategy for raising the
wage and health benefits standards of low-wage workers. A closer study of this strategy further indicates
their potential for promoting greater long-term cooperation between organized labor and CBOs and the
building of effective broad based coalitions for worker’s rights. Such coalition-based organizing
strategies therefore serve as models for strengthening the collective voice of workers and their families, as
they expand their communities’ capacity to support unionization and other pro-labor/community
development activities.
This chapter attempts to better understand the growing role of contemporary labor/community
collaborative efforts as strategies for strengthening the collective voice of California’s workers and their
families. The context for this investigation is a dramatically changing economy and labor market,
coupled with marked changes in California’s labor movement and the growing influence of ethnic and
multi ethnic CBOs. The chapter draws significantly from data derived from a 1999/2000, five county
UCLA study of California union and CBO participation in efforts to impact health and safety issues
affecting workers and their families. The UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations study, which included a
survey of 214 unions and CBOs from the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Alameda, Fresno and
Ventura, also served to illuminate the emergence of new forms of labor/community alliances.
As a form of case study, the chapter also focuses on a living wage campaign currently underway
in Ventura County, California, involving a broad-based progressive coalition of community, labor and
faith-based organizations. Having successfully mobilized grassroots support for living wage ordinances
in the County of Ventura and City of Oxnard, the Ventura County Living Wage Coalition has included a
regional initiative to improve health coverage for low-wage working families, and the establishment of a
regional popular research and educational center for the study of sustainable economics as part of their
effort to pass local living wage ordinances. As a model of labor/community collaboration, living wage
campaigns, such as Ventura County’s, provide useful information for building the overall capacity of
these progressive organizations and strengthening the collective voice of workers.
Historical Context for Labor/Community Collaboration
While contemporary forms of labor/community collaboration are unique to current
socioeconomic conditions facing working families, cooperation between organized labor and CBOs in
California is not new. One prominent example is the Alinsky style organizing work of the Community
Service Organization (CSO) in the early 1950s. Led by Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) organizer Fred
Ross, the CSO engaged in a methodology centered on organizing workers through community-based
efforts and the provision of services to workers and their families (Reitz and Reitz 1987; Tjerandsen
1980; Vargas 1999). The CSO, which itself was established from a collaboration between Mexican
American Steelworkers and several Mexican-American community-based associations, grew into a
significant political force in Los Angeles, registering and mobilizing thousands of new voters, while
addressing such issues as housing discrimination, school segregation and police brutality (Acuña 1988).
The success of the CSO’s grassroots organizing efforts eventually contributed to the establishment of the
United Farm Workers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, continuing its methodology of organizing
grassroots community support for farm worker unionization efforts. This organizing model and other
forms of labor/community collaboration continue today in organizing efforts targeting immigrants and
other low-wage workers.
The current growth in labor/CBO collaboration has challenged some of the historical distrust
between labor and low-income community organizations rooted in the 1960s and 70s. The basis of this
distrust comes in large part from the participation of labor unions in business-led “growth coalitions” that
encouraged private development and supplied union construction jobs to the building and construction
Vargas
trade unions. These efforts prospered at the expense of working class communities, as communities of
color were displaced by urban renewal, and often excluded from union jobs. While they protected current
members in the building trades, these efforts pitted unions against poor communities of color (Zabin and
Martin 1999; Mollenkopf 1983).
Economic and political changes beginning in the mid-1970s have contributed significantly to the
conditions of new non-traditional alliances between labor and community in the 1990s. These changes
included the rise in global competition, capital flight, and the nation’s shift from a manufacturing to
service economy, as well as a growing corporate anti-union offensive and a decade of Reagan/Bush antiunion and corporate deregulation policies. While experiencing a gradual decline since its 37 percent peak
in 1946, labor membership has declined dramatically in the last two decades, dropping from 21 percent in
1980 to below 15 percent in 1995. Today, with only 11 percent of the private-sector labor force
organized, it would take more than 300,000 new members recruited each year to keep up with the growth
in the labor force, and millions more to reach the nation’s 1946 peak (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998).
With labor’s renewed commitment to organizing in the mid-1990s, California has seen a dramatic
rise in organizing campaigns focusing on the state’s growing immigrant labor force. Due to the rank and
file movement, which brought dramatic changes in union leadership, including the 1995 sweeping
election of former Service Employee International Union (SEIU) president John Sweeney to the top
leadership of the AFL-CIO, organized labor has dedicated resources to organizing at a level not seen
since the early industrial unionism of the 1940s. These developments reflect a strategic effort to reverse
the decline in union membership, stagnation in organizing efforts, and steadily shrinking bargaining and
political power (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1998). California’s low-wage service sector workforce has been the
focus of much of the state’s unionization efforts. Demographic change in California, associated in large
part with increased immigration from Mexico, Central America and Asia through the 1980s and 90s, has
resulted in Latino, and Asian immigrants dominating this burgeoning state-wide low-wage labor force.
The increase in immigration has also resulted in significant growth and political influence by
ethnic and multi ethnic CBOs serving immigrant populations throughout California, thereby setting the
groundwork for future labor/community collaborative efforts to organize immigrant workers. Latino
CBOs throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s were at the forefront in serving immigrant families,
providing important social services and undertaking community development programs, while also
challenging anti-immigrant polities and other forms of institutional racism, sometimes even within
organized labor (Vargas 1999; Garcia 1994). Community-based organizations, such as One Stop
Immigration, Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Hermandad Mexicana, El Concilio del
Condado de Ventura, as well as numerous others immigrant rights and service organizations (IRSOs)
throughout California, were advocating for the rights of immigrants, while also building political strength
through naturalization campaigns, citizenship classes, voter registration and voter education campaigns
(Vargas 1999).
By the early 1990s community-based immigrant worker organizations, such as California
Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA), were also organizing Mexican and Central American workers,
including day laborers and housing construction drywallers. Such efforts to organize immigrant workers,
many of whom were undocumented, while supported by many rank and file union members, generally
found little support from union leadership. However, in a few years, pragmatic realization of the potential
of such immigrant organizing in raising union membership and the commitment of a number of labor
activists and organizers resulted in the establishment of the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project
(LAMAP), a multi-union, area-wide drive to organize immigrants working in Los Angeles’ largest
manufacturing district, the Alameda corridor. While now defunct, LAMAP showed the integral
importance of expanding workplace organizing to the community (Bacon 1996).
Many of the contemporary forms of labor/community collaboration are associated with a new
generation of social movements for economic and environmental justice, which emerged throughout the
1990s. Expanding beyond the workplace and the concerns of collective bargaining, these new forms of
labor/community collaborations have addressed unionization, environmental protection, immigrant rights,
and living wage standards for non-union low-wage workers, and the provision of employer based health
Labor and Community Collaboration
coverage. While it is still too early to determine the long-term effectiveness of many of these
collaborative efforts, several are already proving successful in supporting unionization of low-wage
workers, impacting local policy, and building the foundation for the sustainability of broad-based
coalitions for economic justice.
Emergence of Contemporary Labor/Community Collaboration
Recognizing the need to strengthen their capacity to address the economic effects of the new
economy on working families and communities of color, organized labor and CBOs have sought to
establish new collaborative alliances. Since the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s, California has seen
an emergence in coalitions between organized labor and CBOs, including faith, student, and ethnic/multi
ethnic based organizations. A response to the devastating nationwide impact of capital flight and deindustrialization on inner cities since the mid-1970s, unions and CBOs established new alliances in
support of union organizing efforts and for greater accountability in economic development policy
(Conrad 1997; Zabin and Martin 1999). With their roots nationally in defensive efforts to confront plant
closures in the manufacturing industries in the 1980s (Nissen 1995), new labor/community collaborative
efforts have sought to address a wider range of economic issues, including job access and better training
and higher wages for low-wage workers in the growing service sector (Zabin and Martin 1999). As these
alliances are formed, they are contributing to a better understanding of how labor/community
collaboration can strengthen the voice of workers and their families.
Recognition by unions and CBOs of the importance of such collaborative efforts has been
substantiated in the findings of a current 1999/2000 study of California unions and CBOs conducted by
the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations (IIR). The study, of which this author served as the project
coordinator, included separate surveys of union and CBOs based in the five counties of Los Angeles,
Alameda, Fresno, Ventura and Orange, as well as eight individual case studies.1 Entitled “The Role of
Labor in the Future of Work and Health,” the study’s primary focus has been the investigation of
strategies undertaken by California unions and CBOs, both individually and collectively, to impact the
health of workers and their families. Targeting the heads of local unions and the executive directors of
CBOs as the study’s primary respondents, the surveys gathered information on issues of worker health
and safety, while also generating data on the level and type of union and CBO participation in
labor/community collaborations, including involvement in social movement coalitions, and their reasons
for participation. The case studies, which have investigated union/CBO strategies to address health issues
affecting workers, included several cases in which unions and CBOs have participated in broader efforts
to strengthen the collective voice of workers. Case studies also included union and CBO participation in
campaigns to pass local living wage ordinances, efforts to impact welfare to work policy, environmental
justice mobilizations, and union and management partnerships.
From the perspective of union leadership, CBOs are becoming an increasingly important ally in
efforts of unionization, public policy advocacy, and political empowerment. Of the unions surveyed, over
three-quarters acknowledged working cooperatively with CBOs in organizing efforts. While solidaritybased collaboration between different unions and locals is not uncommon within organized labor,
collaboration with groups outside the labor movement remains less common. As discussed earlier,
declining membership, a shift in priority toward organizing low-wage workers and the growing influence
of the state’s immigrant communities, have contributed to greater collaboration between organized labor
and CBOs. The forms of collaboration, while varying, also reflect this context. Table 1 indicates the type
of collaboration.
Vargas
Table 1 Union Collaborative Involvement with CBOs
Cooperative Involvement
Electoral/voter participation
Organizing support for unionization
No.
67
62
%
59
54
Policy Advocacy/lobbying
Community-based organizing
Policy Research
Direct social services
41
33
15
1
36
29
13
1
Numbers and percentages derived from the 88 unions that are currently working cooperatively with community-based
organizations.
Efforts to impact public policy, including policy advocacy, research, lobbying and electoral
politics, make up the greatest point of intersection between these two sectors. While 36 percent identified
the area of policy advocacy and lobbying as their collaborative work with CBOs and 13 percent the area
of policy research, electoral politics is by far the most significant form of public policy collaboration on
which unions are working with CBOs. Of those unions engaged in collaborative working relations with
CBOs, 58 percent were involved in electoral/voter participation efforts. While this is not surprising, given
organized labor’s historical involvement in electoral politics as a public policy strategy, the extent to
which electoral politics is present in labor/community collaboration also reflects efforts to make up
political power lost by the labor movement through the last two decades. This form of labor/community
collaboration has been particularly effective with Latino CBOs, whose constituency has historically voted
in support of pro-labor Democratic candidates. This also reflects the extent to which predominantly
ethnic and multi ethnic CBOs, in particular Latino CBOs, have been effective through the late eighties
and nineties, in increasing immigrant naturalization and voter participation rates. Such alliances have
been in the form of labor support for naturalization services, and direct collaborative participation in voter
registration drives and get-out-to-vote efforts.
Consistent with organized labor’s shift in recent years toward a greater emphasis on labor
organizing, 54 percent of those unions involved in labor/community collaboration were also engaged in
community-based efforts to mobilize support for union organizing efforts. This reflects organized labor’s
shift toward organizing low-wage immigrant workers and recognition of the importance of community
support in the unionization of immigrant workers (Fine 1998; Ness 1998). One of the most successful
examples of this form of labor/community collaboration is Service Employee’s International Union’s
(SEIU) Justice for Janitor unionization campaign in Los Angeles, which was not only effective in
achieving wage increases for its members city-wide, but effectively mobilized broad-based solidarity
among many of Los Angeles’ labor, faith-based and progressive community groups, thereby contributing
to greater public support for this and other unionization campaigns for low-wage workers in the city.
As collaboration between unions and CBOs come to play an increasingly important role in union
efforts to impact policy and mobilize support for unionization efforts, the establishment of broad-based
coalitions has become an increasingly common organizational form of labor/community collaboration.
Nearly 70 percent of the unions surveyed are also participating in one or more labor/community coalition
efforts to address broader social issues. Coalitions to pass local living wage ordinances ranked at the top
of social issues unions were collaborating with CBOs, with 62 percent of the unions participating. This
was followed by 46 percent for coalitions addressing health care reform, and nearly one-third for
advocating for immigrant rights (see table 2).
Labor and Community Collaboration
Table 2 Social Issues Being Addressed by Unions in Labor/Community Coalitions
Social Issue
Living wage
Health care reform
Immigrant rights
Welfare reform
Education reform
Environmental
No.
49
36
25
23
23
17
%
62
45.6
31.6
29.1
29.1
21.5
Numbers and percentages calculated from the 79 unions currently participating in one or more
labor/community coalitions toward addressing social issues.
While the survey data indicates that CBOs, as a sector, have a high propensity to be engaged in
collaborative efforts with other CBOs, it also indicates that they are less frequently engaged in
collaborative efforts with unions. This may be due to the diversity of the CBO survey sample, which
included traditional non profit service providers. Of the one hundred CBOs surveyed, 72 percent were
actively participating in ongoing coalitions effort around community organizing or advocacy activities,
yet only 40 percent had any experience in working cooperatively with unions or other worker
organizations. However, for those CBOs involved in labor-related advocacy or organizing, collaborative
working relations with unions were quite common, with 83 percent of these CBOs working with unions.
As for the type of labor-related advocacy and organizing these CBOs were engaged in, over 60 percent
were involved in worker rights education, and just over one-half were involved in labor advocacy. Only
31 percent were involved in organizing workers, and 17 percent in labor related research (see table 3).
Table 3 CBOs participating in Labor-Related Advocacy and Organizing
Program Type
Worker rights education
Labor advocacy
Organizing workers
Labor research
Other
No.
22
19
11
6
6
%
62
54
31
17
17
The numbers and percentages calculated from the 35 CBOs currently involved in labor-related advocacy or
organizing activities.
Recognizing the link between the poverty conditions facing low-income working families in their
homes and communities and the low wages and powerlessness they experience at the workplace,
increasing numbers of CBOs are reaching out to unions for assistance in community-based development,
advocacy, and organizing efforts. Furthermore, in the wake of increased government devolution and
shrinking social programs, CBOs serving low-income people have been forced to look for new allies.
While many CBOs bring with them a broad range of technical skills and experiences, from legal services
and policy advocacy to fund development, many also recognize their limitations and consequently the
need to seek assistance from other groups. Community concerns that CBOs have sought union support
for range from affordable housing, economic development, education, and environmental safety issues,
which affect both recent immigrants and other low-wage workers.
Some CBOs have also have sought to expand their advocacy and organizing efforts to include
greater support for improved wages and benefits, as well as collective bargaining. Interviews with CBO
executive directors indicate that in some cases it has been through their participation in broad-based
coalitions addressing economic justice issues that they have come to work with unions for the first time,
and in the process have become more aware of the advantages of ongoing collaboration. For example, of
those 26 CBOs which were participating in efforts to pass local living wage ordinances, approximately
two-thirds are working cooperatively with unions, versus less than a quarter of those not participating in
living wage campaigns. The primary reasons CBOs gave for their participation in living wage campaigns
Vargas
were a desire to both improve wage and benefits standards for workers and to strengthen the collective
voice in support of worker issues. In summary, their reasons for participation in living wage campaigns
included: to increase the wages and benefits for affected low-wage workers (83 percent), to raise the
overall wage and benefits standard generally for workers in the region (75 percent), to broaden
labor/community cooperation in the region (50 percent) and to help unionization efforts (44 percent).
The emergence of broad-based coalitions of labor and CBOs is significantly changing the
political and public policy landscape in California and nationwide as these new alliances give greater
voice to low-wage workers and bring together progressive sectors concerned with issues of economic
justice. One need only look at the impact made by the broad-based coalition in Seattle in opposition to the
free trade policies of the World Trade Organization, or the newly established coalition of immigrant rights
advocates and the AFL-CIO in support of a renewed amnesty program, to see the potential for affecting
state, national and even global policy. The impact can also be seen in the effectiveness of the statewide
alliance between Latino CBOs and organized labor in California’s 1998 gubernatorial election. At the
local level, labor/community coalitions are effectively impacting local economic development policy and
establishing higher local wage and benefit standards while providing greater protection for organizing
workers. One clear example of the effectiveness in such collaborations is the passage of local living wage
ordinances in cities and counties throughout California, some of which include labor neutrality and
worker retention clauses.
Living Wage Campaigns as a Model For Labor/Community Collaboration
Where the survey findings provide an overview of the extent and basic characteristics of
labor/community collaboration, case studies, such as the Ventura County’s living wage campaign,
provide an even greater understanding of the process of collaboration. The living wage campaign
currently underway in the County of Ventura illustrates the potential of such alliances to impact the wage
and benefit standards of low-wage workers at the local level, while also strengthening the overall capacity
of working families and their advocates for unionization efforts and initiatives affecting working families.
Formed in December 1997 as the outcome of a series of community meetings initiated by several local
CBOs to discuss the prospect of passing living wage ordinances in a number of Ventura County cities, the
Ventura County Living Wage Coalition (VCLWC) has established itself as a broad-based multi ethnic
regional coalition made up of over 40 community, labor, faith, student and environmental based
organizations. While the VCLWC continues its campaign to secure the passage of its first local living
wage ordinance in the region, the coalition has been successful in mobilizing public support for living
wage proposals currently before the City of Oxnard and County of Ventura. As a result of the success of
VCLWC organizing efforts, in November 1999, the County of Ventura adopted “in concept” a county
living wage ordinance, with formal adoption of an ordinance expected by the end of 2000. The City of
Oxnard is also considering a VCLWC proposed living wage ordinance, scheduled for a council vote in
the fall of 2000.
Since the passage of the Baltimore living wage ordinance in 1994, as many as 35 living wage
ordinances have been passed nationwide, including eight in California. California cities and counties that
have passed living wage ordinances include Los Angeles City, Los Angeles County, Pasadena, Oakland,
San Jose, San Francisco and Berkeley. While the scope and enforcement capacity of each ordinance is
different, the underlying premise is to create minimum standards that raise the income floor for low-wage
workers and redirect the future path of the economy (Zabin and Martin 1999). Modeled after living wage
ordinances already passed in several cities and counties, the ordinances being proposed by the VCLWC
higher wages, health benefits and removal of some obstacles to union organizing (Vargas 1999).
Just as in other communities where living wage campaigns have been waged, the Ventura County
living wage campaign has provided a number of CBOs the opportunity to participate, often for the first
time, in solidarity actions with labor, as well as collaborative efforts with local unions. Of the thirteen
surveyed Ventura County CBOs involved in living wage campaigns, over half were currently working
cooperatively in one form or another with labor unions, in contrast with only one of the surveyed CBOs
which was not involved in the living wage effort. Interviews with several CBO executive directors
Labor and Community Collaboration
indicated that for a majority of these CBOs, the living wage effort was the first time, as an organization,
that they had worked collaboratively with unions.
The VCLWC’s emphasis on coalition building as one of the primary elements of its mission is
reflected in CBO coalition members’ attitude toward their establishing new collaborative working
relations with unions. In comparison with the reasons given for living wage coalition participation by the
overall sample of CBOs, Ventura County CBOs participating in the local living wage effort placed a
significantly greater importance on “broadening labor/community cooperation.” Since the formation of
the VCLWC, CBO coalition members have participated in labor organizing efforts, including support for
United Farm Workers actions to organize mushroom workers, independent unionization of packinghouse
workers, and SEIU’s home-care worker organizing efforts. Union support for CBO mobilizations and
lobbying efforts have included public support and testimony on behalf of proposed affordable housing
projects and efforts to ban the use of the pesticide Methyl Bromide in proximity to schools.
Like the City of Los Angeles’ living wage ordinance, ordinances proposed by the VCLWC
include measures to directly improve the climate for unionization. VCLWC ordinances include “worker
retention” and “labor peace” provisions. The worker retention provision provides for job security at the
point when the employer’s contract and/or lease with the public agency expires, by requiring any new
contractors to retain the workers of the previous contractor for 90 days. Pioneered by San Jose’s labor
peace, or labor neutrality ordinance provision, Ventura County ordinances would restrict contractors,
lessees and subsidy recipients from using public funds to influence workers on the question of
unionization, thereby avoiding the all too common practice of hiring high paid union busters to break
unionization efforts. The VCLWC ordinance also includes an “opt out” clause, which allows specific
terms of the ordinance to be superseded by a collective bargaining contract. As seen by the effective use
of similar pro-labor provisions included in the Los Angeles City ordinance, the VCLWC will have
positioned itself to only offer support for new developments in return for compliance with living wage
neutrality in the event of organizing drives.
As the VCLWC advances in its campaign to pass living wage ordinances in the City of Oxnard
and the County of Ventura, it has become increasingly successful in engaging affected workers into
coalition actions. Because those workers to be affected by living wage ordnances are, for the most part,
unorganized and have not yet been targeted for unionization campaigns, traditional labor organizing
methods have not been used. Such efforts generally require full-time labor organizers. Ventura County’s
living wage effort, unlike most living wage campaigns, has been undertaken on a strictly volunteer basis
without funded staff support. Without funds to hire full-time organizers, efforts to engage affected
workers have taken the form of outreach methods used by CBOs, such as community meetings, tables at
community events, visibility on the local English and Spanish media, and presentations to community
associations and church groups and to workers participating in retraining efforts. Volunteers can more
easily conduct such efforts. By far the most successful has been an arrangement established with the
Center for Employment Training (CET) to provide presentations to unemployed or underemployed
workers seeking retraining. Such mobilizations have served to bring the voice of low-wage workers and
their families into the local policy arena, providing testimony and participation at county board of
supervisors and city council meetings.
Living wage efforts can provide avenues for addressing other policy issues affecting working
families, including policies to increase the number of employers providing health coverage for non-union
workers. For example, while all living wage ordinances seek to raise the wages of low-wage workers, the
inclusion of employer health coverage incentives within living wage ordinances, along with the
mobilization of broad-based coalition actions, can place greater attention on legislation and other
remedies toward addressing the severe lack of health coverage for working families. Drawing from the
living wage ordinance adopted by the City of Los Angeles in 1997, ordinances currently before the
Ventura Board of Supervisors and Oxnard City Council include provisions for health benefits. Under
these proposals, employees of city and county contractors, subsidy recipients and lessees of $25,000 or
more are required to pay their employees $8 an hour with health benefits, or $10 without. Like the Los
Angeles ordinance, the Ventura County and Oxnard ordinances reflect the importance of health benefits
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in compensation packages for low-wage workers and affirm the role of employers in ensuring that
workers have access to health care.
In recognizing the high cost of insurance premiums as an argument by employers for not
providing health coverage to their workers, efforts by the have included the convening of a regional
taskforce to begin to address health coverage as a local policy issue. Under most HMOs and PPOs, the
additional $2 per hour in health benefits in lieu of the higher wage, required by the VCLWC’s ordinances,
is sufficient for employers under group purchasing plans to provide health insurance for their workers
with dependents. However, underwriting requirements for firms of fewer than 50 employees can result in
premiums above $2 per hour for coverage of workers and their families. For this reason, the VCLWC has
also organized a county taskforce on healthcare for working families, with the mission of investigating
new options to improve low wage workers’ access to healthcare coverage, including the possible
provision of managed care through the county’s existing public hospital and clinics. Participants in the
taskforce include employers, insurance underwriters, labor, physicians, health advocates, CBO service
providers, and a policy expert from UCLA’s Lewis Center for Policy Studies.
As a means of sustaining the long-term viability of labor/community living wage coalitions as
regional institutions for economic justice, numerous coalitions around the country have evolved new
collaborative organizations that can integrate strategies for organizing, policy development, and alliance
building (Zabin 1999). In some cases, the living wage coalition has directly established the new
organization, such as in the case of Oakland, which formed a new organization after the passage of the
ordinance. Early recognition of the need for such an organization has prompted the establishment of a
new non profit umbrella organization in order to sustain the coalition of labor and community groups, as
well as to support the existing living wage campaign.
Drawing from hybrid organizational models, such as Sustainable Milwaukee, San Jose’s Working
Partnership and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), the VCLWC has undertaken
the establishment of its own regional non profit organization, Tri-Counties Costal Alliance United for a
Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). Established as a non profit popular research, information and
educational center for the study of sustainable economic policies and development activities in Ventura,
Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, CAUSE will serve as an umbrella organization for social, economic
and environmental justice initiatives. With committed funding from several progressive foundations,
CAUSE will also provide a means for raising foundation grants in support of such efforts as the living
wage campaign, a health coverage taskforce and the development of a regional worker center, by
convening participatory research efforts and providing such activities as policy research and analysis,
technical assistance, staff support and popular education.
Conclusion
The emergence of new forms of labor/community collaborations reflect a growing recognition by
unions and CBOs of the need to strengthen the voice of workers and to build the collective capacity of
these organizations in support of those workers left behind in the new economy. This recognition is
based in large part on labor’s need to recover dramatic losses in union membership, which have taken
place over the last half-century. This, in turn, has resulted in labor’s shift toward organizing unorganized
workers, which, in states such as California, has meant targeting low-wage, predominantly immigrant
workers. Drawing from earlier experiences, such as efforts to organize Mexican farm workers in
California during the 1950s and 1960s and recent efforts by immigrant rights and service organizations to
organize immigrants throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, unions and CBOs are merging with new social
movements for social, economic and environmental justice to establish new forms of labor/community
collaboration. As these organizational formations evolve, they also offer the potential for impacting not
only local policy, but also state and federal public policy affecting working families, such as issues of
health care, education and global free trade policy.
Such collaborative formations also raise consciousness of the plight of low-wage workers and
their families and the important role each group plays in addressing these issues, while also bringing
together the strengths of each group to improve the overall capacity of workers and their advocates. In
Labor and Community Collaboration
the process, both unions and CBOs learn important skills and gain insights from each other. For example,
unions can learn new approaches to leadership development, multiculturalism, fund development and
relationship building from CBOs. CBOs, in turn can learn tactics from unions for turning commitment
and activity into organization. Joint efforts in leadership development, workers centers, research, and
lobbying are programmatic examples, which draw on the best of both groups (Needleman 1998).
Lastly, social movements for economic justice, such as living wage campaigns, can offer new
models toward empowering and improving the lives of low-wage workers, while also nurturing
community/labor solidarity and collaboration. The strategic inclusion of measures to improve the climate
for unionization in living wage ordinances, such as worker retention and labor neutrality provisions,
serves to further support local unionization efforts. Furthermore, by incorporating provisions in living
wage ordinances which not only seek higher wage standards for employees of city and county contracts
but also provide incentives for the provision of health benefits as well as greater accountability in
economic development, living wage campaigns can place the needs of low-wage workers and their
families on the local policy agenda. Lastly, broad-based labor and community collaboratives facilitate the
mobilization of affected workers, their families and neighbors, thereby expanding the overall capacity of
workers to affect needed change and strengthening their collective voice.
Vargas
References
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Labor and Community Collaboration
Endnotes
1
The Future of Work and Health study of California unions and CBOs was conducted by the UCLA Institute of Industrial
Relations under a grant funded by the Wellness Foundation. The study’s primary data was derived from two separate mail
surveys of unions and CBOs, conducted from September 1999 to February 2000, targeting unions and CBOs in the counties of
Los Angeles, Alameda, Orange, Ventura and Fresno. The study derived its survey universe of 800 unions and CBOs from union
and non profit service directories and membership lists from associations, labor councils and federations, such as the Los Angeles
County Federation of Labor. Because of the study’s emphasis on health and safety related issues relating to identified case
studies, one-half of the universe of Los Angeles-based unions were segmented to include adequate representation of teachers
unions, hospitality unions and health care unions. The other half of the Los Angeles-based union universe was randomly chosen
from the County Federation of Labor mailing list. The full CBO survey universe was also segmented to only include non profit
community-based advocacy and health and human service organizations.
Union survey questions were broken into eleven categories, including: local union background, health plans, health and safety
issues, participation in policy debates, labor/community cooperation, immigration, technological change, union/management
cooperation, organizing, government agencies, propositions and general working conditions. Similarly, the CBO survey
questions were broken into the following categories: organizational background, community organizing and development
activities, labor related activities, health care/environmental/ or worker health and safety issues, and organizational development.
Data generated from the eight case studies was derived from interviews, secondary data sources, such as the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, and literature reviews. The case studies included: Agricultural Workers and Pesticide Health Hazards, Teachers
Unions and Violence in Public Schools, Living Wage Campaigns and Employer-based Health Coverage, Joint WorkerManagement Efforts at Kaiser Health, Environmental Justice and the AQMD, Health and Safety Efforts of Immigrant Worker
Centers, Union Participation in Single Payer Health Legislation, and Union and CBO Welfare to Work Policy Advocacy.